Yuqian Yan (PhD Candidate, Cinema and Media Studies & EALC)
“Emplacing the Ancient: the Characters and Their World”
Friday, November 10th, 3-5pm in CEAS 319
Discussant: Pao-Chen Tang (PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies & EALC)
Co-sponsored with the Mass Culture Workshop
Please join us Friday (11/10) from 3-5pm, as we host Yuqian Yan (PhD Candidate, Cinema and Media Studies & EALC). She will present a draft of her dissertation chapter, which she summarizes as follows:
Location shooting was an important feature of Chinese ancient costume films (guzhuang pian) in the 1920s. Filmmakers went beyond confined studio spaces in Shanghai to search for scenic sites to locate familiar tales from the past. What motivated them to incorporate present landscapes in the representations of ancient stories? What kinds of places could be qualified as ancient settings? How did the incorporation of real sites affect audiences’ viewing experiences? This chapter studies Chinese filmmakers’ efforts to integrate contemporary locations into cinematic adaptations of traditional tales. By directly engaging the present in the portrayal of the ancient, filmmakers suggested a different possibility of relating to the past, and demonstrated the new cinematic medium’s special capacity in facilitating a new way to evoke the past through the present.
The paper is available directly below, or at this link. If you have not received the password, or have questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact Helina Mazza-Hilway (mazzah@uchicago.edu) or Susan Su (susansu@uchicago.edu).
